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Vande Velde's NY Times blog: Surviving a trial as a team

Read Christian Vande Velde’s blog on the New York Times web site.

Tuesday’s team time trial was bittersweet given the circumstances: we lost four of nine riders with 28 kilometers, or about 17 miles, to go over an undulating, technical course with gale-force winds. This was a consequence of our team going fast from the start and some of our riders not matching the pace.

Christian Vande Velde - Tour de France 2009, stage 4 (TTT)This isn’t the best situation to be in less than halfway through the race, but when I looked around I was reassured that we had national, Olympic and world champions, the fastest guys in the world in the time trial. I was still confident we would be all right. It was more pressure than I expected but it was all right nonetheless. As long as we stayed upright (seven teams crashed on Tuesday) and went as fast as we could I would be happy.

I’ll admit that my heart sank when Matt White, our director, came over the radio and said that there were five of us left. Five is the minimum number of riders that teams must finish with in a team time trial, so we knew we could not lose any more riders. At that point, we weren’t even halfway done with the course.

Read the full entry.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Features, Home Page and tagged with , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • http://commuter-bicycle-gear.com Don

    I was quite worried for you guys when I saw you down to 5. Good job finishing strong!

  • barb walker

    well done fro second to Astana not bad for 5 guys having to ride their asses off for most of the TTT stage lol Congrats

  • http://blog.redfin.com Glenn Kelman

    It was great to see an underdog in the tour fight so hard. You guys were amazing.

  • Darren DeGuire

    Nice work Christian! Although I must say…Oakley’s would be so much better!!

  • Bryan O’Neill

    Garmin’s TTT effort was tremendous. It came down to 4 riders pulling and blowing away the competition at every check. The Garmin machine held perfect form through the wind, the turns, and over the hills. Oh — DZ looks a lot like captain America in the TT national champion jersey.

  • Glen in Lemont

    A strong 2nd place finish made it look like it was team strategy so everything worked out in the end. Great ride Garmin!

  • Curt Lieneck

    I’m in awe of what you are doing and how you guys handled the TT. Stay safe, ride strong, and now that your fans are legion. Ride, man, ride. Argyle rules!

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